To Climates Unknown: An Alternate History of a World Without America

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Sixteen-year-old apprentice sailor William Adams exited the shipyard where he worked at Limehouse, rowed a boat across the Thames, and headed to the Royal Navy docks in Deptford, where already an adoring multitude was gathering to watch the ceremonial mooring of the Golden Hind and cheer its captain, England’s newest hero Francis Drake. The bravest of explorers to his countrymen, no better than a thirsty suckerfish to Spain, the man was equal measures loved at home and almost universally despised abroad. Both sentiments were born of one divisive fact: the world had only so much gold and silver, and a pound of it the Spanish didn’t take became a pound in England’s coffers. For a boy of William’s age, the tales of raided galleons and newly claimed possessions for the Crown made Drake a paragon of sailors. But for some in high positions, he was an unbridled, reckless, dangerously independent man.

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